Other Social Media Platforms: YouTube and Beyond

March 19th, 2014

Facebook and Twitter aren’t the only platforms that you can use to boost your app’s presence and outreach. In truth, if you can support a social media presence across mutliple platforms, then you should. Your users and potential customers may be everywhere and nowhere that you expect them to be – and when you consider that it effectively costs nothing to open up and maintain social media accounts, it only makes sense to make your internet presence as far-reaching as possible.

With that in mind, let’s take a look at what free platforms you can use to promote your app.

From the mundane “Get Your Family to Download Your App” to the off the wall “Create Beer Coasters” join us on a 52-week journey of some of the top ways to promote and market your mobile application.

Week 11

Mobile Marketing Tips: Other Social Media Platforms

YouTube

The de-facto king of online video, YouTube is the site people turn to when they’re looking to find something entertaining, informative, or funny to watch. It’s not just videos of cats, by the way – plenty of companies use YouTube to expand upon ad campaigns, press releases, and content posted on blogs and other social media outlets.

When it comes to marketing and promoting an app, videos are important because they offer your customers a chance to see how the app functions before they open up iTunes or Google Play. Additionally, the visual appeal of videos give you more time to discuss the features and benefits of the app in ways that websites, tweets, and blog posts can’t. Most importantly, you put a voice, a real human voice, behind a demonstration of your product’s capabilities.

As a side note, video content is all but mandatory when it comes to promoting, marketing, and advertising a game. Mobile game players are among the most technology-oriented demographics, and they’re going to want to see your game in action before they hit the “download” button.

Instagram

It’s not just for pictures of brunch – in truth, some of the world’s most prominent brands use Instagram to showcase new product lines and give sneak peeks at upcoming releases. Whether it’s a clothing line, automobile, or restaurant, Instagram offers a way to get your product placed side-by-side with photos from your customer’s friends and family.

A secret benefit to Instagram is that users typically open the app during idle moments – waiting for the bus, sitting in the doctor’s office lobby, or over a solitary lunch. With this in mind, you can craft your app’s photos to appeal to someone who’s bored and looking for a little bit of diversion in the middle of their day.

Tumblr

Tumblr is one of the most popular blogging platforms in the world. Although many view it as something exclusively used by the adolescent crowd, the truth is that Tumblr users come from all walks of life, age, income, and interests. Corporate users of the platform include titans like GE, NBC, and Delta Airlines. Almost any kind of content can be posted to Tumblr, including text, photos, video, and audio. However, it is unique amongst all blogging platforms in two different ways:

Firstly, it allows users to post GIFs – you know, those short, moving pseudo-video images you commonly see on sites like BuzzFeed or Reddit. GIFs are quickly becoming the popular currency of the Internet, commonly used as a sort of stand-in for nuanced emotions and situations. Tumblr users post GIFs to illustrate their feelings on eating, drinking, dating, and the minutiae of everyday life. A well-made and memorable GIF, or a post that implements a GIF, can be instantly spread across the Tumblr-verse and the rest of the Internet.

Secondly, Tumblr offers a “reblog” feature that functions similarly to the Twitter “retweeting” feature. Simply put, if someone enjoys a piece of content and they want to share the post with their followers, all they have to do is hit a button.

A Word of Warning

Not every social media platform is the best platform for the kind of message you’re trying to send your customers. The sites and platforms below are among the most popular and the most commonly used – but that doesn’t mean that any or all of them are appropriate for the kind of app you’re trying to promote. When choosing a social media platform, it’s always important to ask yourself:

Am I prepared to maintain a presence on this platform? Can I or my team consistently produce value-giving content that will work for this platform?

Am I prepared to respond to customer comments and complaints on this platform?

Is this platform appropriate for the kinds of customers I’m trying to reach?

While it can be cumbersome to manage a Facebook page, Twitter account, and YouTube channel all at once, there are some tools that exist to help manage all of your accounts. We’ll be taking a look next week at some of the more popular social media management utilities you can use.

Sam Allen

Samuel is something of a marketing Swiss Army knife. He enjoys helping clients build their web presence and visual identity through design, SEO, and good ol' fashioned content. A photographer by trade, he's had work published in the New York Times and the New Jersey Star-Ledger.